Skating has become increasingly popular, i.a. thanks to the great increase of the number of artificially frozen ice-hockey rinks and skating arenas. In connection therewith also the need of sharpening of the skates has increased considerably. At the same time the requirements of the quality of the sharpening have increased, e.g. as regards ice-hockey and figure skates.
At present, almost all sharpening of skates is performed manually or semi-automatically, the skates being braced in a jig or the like and a rotating grinding wheel being passed over the skate blade a desired number of times. Not only the manual, but also the semi-automatic sharpening method requires a certain sharpening skill of the operator, and the sharpening procedure is time-consuming.
There is thus a great need of fully automated skate sharpening machines, which do not require any skilled operator but can be used by anybody, and which provide for a rapid sharpening of high quality. As far as we know there is no all-automatic skate sharpening machine on the Swedish market, but there are several proposals for such machines in the patent literature, e.g. in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,438,543, 3,735,533, 3,827,185 and 4,235,050. These previously disclosed automatic skate sharpening machines have deficiences in various respects, and the present invention relates to improvements, simplifications and developments of the known skate sharpening devices.